Did you ever wonder how similar one King Kong happens to be from the next? Decades separate the three versions of the classic monkey movie, created by Merian C. Cooper. But aside from improvements in visual effects, the storytelling beats of the different cuts of on-screen King Kong movies aren’t as different as you might assume. And because this is 2012, and the Internet is amazing, we now have a gif that summarizes the 1933 movies and its two remakes from 1976 and 2005.
The gallery was posted on Imgur by Kondrat1983. Give it a moment to load. It’s worth a look:
Nothing against the Dino De Laurentiis version from ’76, which takes the most liberties with the story, it’s fascinating to compare Peter Jackson’s adaptation to Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1933 feature. The differences aren’t as extreme as you’d think. Likely, it’s because of Jackson’s slavish devotion to his source material. Look at Jackson’s Kong snapping the jaws of a dinosaur. It’s a near-perfect replication of the 1933 version … only polished up with 2005 digital effects. The same applies to the theater marquee announcing Carl Denham’s “Eighth Wonder of the World.” The modern version doesn’t look that much different, and yet, it’s better.
The directors also did a really good job of duplicating Fay Wray’s vulnerable blonde with Jessica Lange (in 1976) and Naomi Watts (in 2005). This gif is so cool. And people need to do more of these, given the fact that we’re living in the “golden age” of remakes. Wouldn’t you want to see simultaneous gifs of the two Psycho cuts? Or David Cronenberg’s The Fly alongside the 1950s classic? Let’s make this one of the first gifs in a series.
